ケッペキショウ

I haven't posted a vocaloid song in a while, it seems. I haven't really been listening to a lot of recent VOCALOID either. The more recent ones didn't sound good until this one showed up, although there was also this other really neat GUMI song which I think I never posted here... I should do that some time later. For now there's this one, and I happened to remember to post it this time. :V

The instrumentals in this one sound really cool, so that's why I like it. GUMI isn't too bad in singing this either. The video seems dramatic but I don't really know the meanings behind the theme as my Japanese is rather limited, so :V It's a neat song though so I can see why it reached nearly #1 not too long after it was released. 

The tital says "keppeki shower"... eer I think. What? :V what does google say? "Fastidiousness show" I see. No, I don't. 

Fujoshi Fish

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/12/scienceshot-homosexual-fish-more.html

The fandom... it exists in other species.

Brain Cells

http://www.nature.com/news/brain-cells-made-from-urine-1.11985

If this flies this is actually an incredible feat. Although its still funny to think about. Gives a new meaning to "mind in the gutter"! :V

Rapping

http://www.nature.com/news/brain-scans-of-rappers-shed-light-on-creativity-1.11835

This guy gets a name on a paper for being a rapper.

THIS IS ACADEMIA! THIS IS RESEARCH! THIS IS SCIENCEEEE

Gloss

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v15/n11/full/nn.3221.html

I do have to admit, gloss does WONDERs to an CG artwork at times. I think they started putting that in a lot of anime too (see: Denpa Onna). Not entirely logical, though, but I guess it tickles the brain! Just like this paper suggests.


GLOSS!

Where there's a Kan...

...I will steal it.

CHANKAN #6

The World Is Ending.

A PSP rhythm game based on GUMI is coming out.

http://www.siliconera.com/2012/10/09/report-new-vocaloid-game-featuring-megpoid-coming-to-psp-this-spring

命短し恋せよ乙女

I'm pretty surprised, a Teto song that sounds pretty good. Well, it could have been that there are lots of good Teto songs out there but not many of them reach the top 10, that's for sure. I do like the pacing and the art designs in this song. I think I'd like the lyrics too if I knew what it was talking about... :V

I think the title has to do something with life and love and young maidens... Something about short-lived maidens? :V

...Google Translate says "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may". Wait... what?

Atelier Meruru part ??? (I forgot already)

Pepped up Healing Salves are the best.

If there was one thing I regretted in Totori coming from Rorona, it was that I couldn't register the Pepped Up trait (because in Totori they don't let you register high level traits). You could get your chims to do it, but you might as well let your Chims make some better, high end items like N/A or Elixirs instead, so really the Pepped Up trait was lost through obscurity.

But, in Meruru they brought that back. In Meruru items have a tendency to be stupidly expensive so while you can register high end traits your items tend to be ridiculously expensive as well. But not if your item itself is relatively cheap. Healing salves is like the crappiest of all healing items, but that's all you really need if you ever get hit.

So now I get these awesome, autoheal-on-hit healing salves that heal for a reasonable amount of damage, then when my turn rolls around I recover even more damage from HP regen, then Convert lets me regen even more HP upon attacking... and then even if the enemy manages to kill me, I have auto-res so I don't really die...Endless HP is great!


...too bad this doesn't help when your enemy moves 5 turns in a row, choosing to heal 3k HP each turn... NEW PLAN NEEDED

Vocaloid Art (naoto)

Amazing art is amazing. GUMI-CHANNNN~~~ (IA too~)

Atelier Meruru 2nd Playthrough Pt. 2

I may have said this before somewhere, but when Totori is on the topic of making homunculi she has the best and cutest face ever.

"e-he! I can't tell you yet!"

You truly wonder what's going on in her mind... :V

EDIT: Story parts aside, I have already begun the "overpowering chars to break the game" process. I notice that most people in the boards are going for speed such that enemies can't do a thing before they get obliterated by Meruru's team. because of the whole "doesn't use a part of your day if meruru doesn't get a turn" thing, this would make sense - pump the speed of your allies so that they obliterate everything before Meruru can even move. For the most part this is cool with the common enemies.

For bosses though, it's cooler to see their attacks and see how you can withstand them! So I'm going the defense and HP healing route. Sadly defense is mostly for non-elemental attacks only, and getting full elemental immunity for all 4 elements seems like a really difficult task. Luckily, we have HP regen! And luckily, we have a ton of traits for HP regen that can stack on top of each other! And then we have auto-KO recover (after one turn)! So essentially the only way an enemy can obliterate my team is if it launches some wide-scale attack that would OHKO anyone... well... lets hope that doesn't happen. But...

Totori's HP regen is looking freaking amazing right now, though. Heals for 78 HP per turn without items, with the mystery Ankh it heals for 100 HP per turn, then, pocketwatch for auto KO recovery... HAHAHA COME AT HER YOU GUYS, JUST TRY AND KILL HER, SHE'LL COME BACK ALIVE LIKE A ZOMBIE HAHAHA

Oh right we can also top it off with some Lively or Pepped Up trait and along with the convert function which absorbs HP from attack HAHAHA TOTORI IS UNSTOPPABLE HAHAHAHAHA

Atelier Meruru (2nd Playthrough)

THESE ENDING REQUIREMENTS HOLY CRAP WTF WTF WHAT WHAT WHY IS IT NOT JUST "increase char friendship" ;o; ;o; ;o;

Ren＊Ai

The song that starts in the middle.

No, seriously. :V Certainly gave me a "wait, what?" feeling since I was tabbed out to do other things, and suddenly the pace of the song changed.

It's not too bad of a song, but then again I don't think there's been a lot of good songs lately. There seems to be some theme of China and GUMI for whatever reason, which is interesting, but not that good sounding imo. Oh, there is also this rather realistic and slightly freaky video of Miku singing Disappearance... the eyes don't have enough saccades so the model doesn't turn out as realistic as it could have been (putting aside the unrealistically perfect proportions in other parts of the body). But that's not this video. This video is LOVE!

Hi-Res Printing

http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v7/n9/full/nnano.2012.128.html

They say " security, steganography, nanoscale optical filters and high-density spectrally encoded optical data storage"

I say QUALITY (color) DOUJINSHI

Rinshan

Closed Kan on dora.

Flipped over 3m.

drew 4m, also dora.

was winning tile, as well as keeping me in tanyao.

Took a while to get my first rinshan, but looked to be a good one! :V

Hey look red dora too!

Neptunia Anime

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2012-08-28/compile-heart-neptunia-rpgs-also-get-anime

In honesty I really didn't think Neptunia would get an anime, at all, considering it is a relatively not-so-great series although the concept is pretty amusing.

BUT HEY

NEPGEAR, RIGHT? :V

I think I'd have preferred an Atelier anime series though.

EDIT: What IS apparently happening with the Atelier series: http://andriasang.com/con2ew/atelier_totori_vita/ <<< proof that Totori is the best 

Growing Brains

http://www.nature.com/news/tissue-engineering-the-brainmaker-1.11232

Since this is Japan, I hope that in the future we can have home-grown moe maid humanoids~!

I saw a good amount of fanart for this song so I wanted to check out and see what it's about. Apparently, it's about China! :V I think the song in itself isn't too bad, but I believe the acting and the lyrics are what makes this video pretty amusing. I don't understand all of what's going on, but I do notice the times when the VOCALOIDS try to speak Chinese, which is pretty funny.

The title seems to say some kind of fanclub... what does google translate say?!? ...nope google translate isn't helping me either. ANYONE HAVE ANY SUGGESTIONS?

Atelier Totori 2 (Unfinished, part 2)

From now on I'm no longer calling this game "Atelier Meruru", but in actuality it will be "Atelier Totori 2" because clearly (to me) this is just a sequel to the first Atelier Totori game. And "Atelier Rorona" is of course "Atelier Totori 0".

TOTORI IS THE MAIN CHARACTER OKAY.


Anyway. There is some early spoilers but I highly doubt anyone who is interested in the game will have not played it by now.


So Hom-chan is back! I'm happy, but I liked her outfit in the first game better :(. But still, nice to have artificial humans running around doing my work for me. We get them pretty early in the game too, so that's nice, along with the registering of items. This is useful considering how annoying it is to synthesize items that require like 7 steps when you start with the basic gatherable ingredients...

Oh yeah. Astrid is such a jerk. :V

Atelier Meruru (Unfinished, Part 1)

Oh god Totori's win pose is so cute.

Oh man oh man oh man TOTORI I'M SO GLAD YOU'RE BACK TOTORIIIIIIIII TOTORIIIIIIIII


...what? Meruru? Who's that? :V

Comiket 82 Day 3

1. That feel where you go in circles in an area for so long after having bought so much stuff, you aren't sure if you bought doujin from that good looking booth already or not.  (and of course you have too much stuff you're carrying to bother looking through and checking)

2. People say its awkward when they see a cute little girl selling hardcore ero doujin. I find it more awkward finding 50-60 year old people selling loli moebait stuff... >.> Oh well, don't discriminate!

3. Screw east hall ero doujin, west hall 2 original works is where its at. Everything is SO AMAZING THERE.

4. Comiket traffic is like everyday Hong Kong rush hour subways, except you tend to have goods you want to protect rather than yourself. But I daresay Hong Kong at the subway is a worse experience in general than Comiket.

5. Somehow, I had the MOST stuff I wanted to buy today, but I finished up comiket the earliest today. I blame pointless 3 hour lines in the previous days which I desperately avoided today.

6. Advice for future comiket goers: use the backdoor to go between east-west. Less than 5 minutes to go from one hall to another. I had no trouble going from west to east to west again.  It was more trouble going through the halls itself, especially east hall. 


...I need to buy a new suitcase. :|

Comiket 82 Day 2

"Hah! I don't need to buy tapestries, they're useless!!"

*buys 2* "..."




"Okay, no more bags, I can't carry all of them back and they're terribly hard to pack. No more bags, no more bags."

*gets special edition set because... of the bag* "Wait... shit."

Comike 82 Day 1

Buying that seemingly useless bookcase cover was the best purchase I have ever made so far.

History Cycles

http://www.nature.com/news/human-cycles-history-as-science-1.11078

This is pretty cool, mainly because I really can see something happening in 2020. Judging just from the rancor on facebook alone, it will probably be something about gay rights, industry copyright vs freedom of internet, or both.

I think the medium might be different though. Whereas before there is a lot of riots straight out on the streets, I think there's going to be a lot more focus on online activity when the next "revolution" comes.

Jurassic Park

http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/08/01/0435229/australian-billionaire-wants-to-build-jurassic-park-style-resort

Eerm. wtf, really? :V


ga-GAOooo... :V

チルドレンレコード

Actually, I don't think song was that great at first but it kind of grew on me again. It's Jin I guess, what do you expect. Although this song hasn't let me win a mahjong game once yet. Probably not the best song to play for mahjong. I think IA isn't a good choice for music when I play mahjong. :|

Title seems to say "Children Record"... okay... :V 

Pathogenic Treatment

http://www.nature.com/news/can-bacteria-fight-brain-cancer-1.11080

This is a pretty scary concept... purposely try to boost the immune system response with an infection to fight off cancer? That's dealing with the immune system, bacteria, and cancer at the same time... this is a really scary concept. :|

The people being treated have to have a REALLY healthy body other than cancer for this to work!

39

Its a deco27 (and sasakure.uk) Miku song on my birthday! Happy Birthday! A song like this must be great right?!?! Well, honestly its not the best, but still not too bad. Something not too bad to listen to in loop for a while.

In other news, its my birthday but not much exciting stuff happened. I was supposed to have a birthday dinner but it got cancelled, so instead I watched smile precure... for a rather gloomy birthday Smile Precure put a smile on my face... ;_;

Beauty goes "こっち　こっち!" Waaah she's so cute! :V

Exploding Termites

Just going around, looking at random articles lazily when suddenly I see:

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/07/old-termites-blow-themselves-up-.html


how can I not read this.

Franken-Jellyfish

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/07/artificial-jellyfish-swims-like-.html

Next stop, Ika-musume zombies! she'll eat your brains-ika!

Cell Simulation

http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674(12)00776-3

Nothing else to say, other than this is really really cool.

Where I first saw this info:

http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/07/20/2131234/software-emulates-organisms-entire-lifespan?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

走れ

Lots of good GUMI songs lately, GUMI seems pretty popular these couple days! Must be because her birthday recently passed. I really like how this song has a steady melodic "up and down" pattern in both the stanzas and choruses. It starts off pretty straightforward, then goes a bit up and down, sort of like strolling around hilly areas.

Speaking of strolling, I'm pretty sure the title to this song means something like "Walking".
...google says "Hashire". ...What?

Concerts

I went to two concerts while I was in Hong Kong (I think I briefly mentioned this before on my blog). I never did anything for the KOTOKO concert and now I mostly don't have too much to say about it anymore, except that she did some of her older songs, some of her not-so-old songs, and some of her recent releases. Overall, I liked it and I think in general, concertwise, the KOTOKO concert was better.


Shoko-tan concert had, interestingly enough, a much more enthused atmosphere. Perhaps because it was advertised more or she's more popular in Hong Kong, I'm not sure. But whereas the KOTOKO concert there was no benefit for coming early, I really should have came earlier for the Shoko-tan concert because there was actually quite a few cosplayers and people who dressed up. For the cosplay there was Mikus, Saint Seiya people who i don't know (I think Saint Seiya is very popular in China... :V) and a pair of Smile Precure cosplayers! As usually my incredible shyness prevented me from getting  a picture of them, but its okay.

Shoko-tan concert was... hmm... how to say it, I wasn't quite as enthused I feel as the other concerts. Maybe its because I don't know a lot of her songs in general. But she did sing quite a few anime songs, songs which are a bit older. The anime songs she sang were:

Gurren Laggan Intro (obviously)
Some series I didn't watch
Saint Saiya intro (only know this because she said she'd sing it, well, also the chorus has "SAINT SAIYA" in it)
Don't Be Lazy (I guess a lot of HK people watched K-On)
the Ranka Kira song I keep forgetting the title to (which btw not a lot of people seemed to know, not even much reaction to "kira"... I guess Macross F wasn't big in HK)
Aquarion intro (people who haven't watched the anime even know this song... I'm guessing most of the HK fans did watch it though...I think)
God Knows... (Man, to think Haruhi is considered old now...)
Sailor Moon (remake coming in 2013, derp :V)
Chinese Gurren Laggan Intro (...wow really?)


She also sang a bunch of her own songs which I didn't know of. One of the songs was some cat song, and then the dancers came out with a bunch of freaky cat mask things... it was uh, not too cool imo, but oh well.

In particular one of the things that seemed bothersome about the concert (besides loud nice, but that's in every concert) is the lights. The lights often flashed really brightly, to the audience, and also at a really high frequency so it actually became rather bothersome. It seems likely it could be seizure inducing! Well, aside from that, it was an interesting experience and I don't regret going to the concert. It could be better, but it was fun all the same.

And now I should get back to work. :V Actually I have something to write up somewhat related to my work but I shall write that another day when I feel like procrastinating again.

卯月の嘘

I really like the pacing of this song. Sometimes it goes at normal speeds, sometimes it goes at slow, steady, emphasize beats, and sometimes its just fast (at the chorus). Really fun song to listen to. And play mahjong to. But maybe the latter is just because I seem to win when listening to this song. :V GUMI songs are the way to go for me with mahjong! :V The title seems to say... some moon's lie? Let's ask google! "Uzuki's Lie"? April's Lie? April fools?!?!? :V

Rewatching Saki

Spoilers but seriously who hasn't watched saki first season anymore.


HOLY CRAP I DIDN'T REALIZE WHEN I FIRST WATCHED BECAUSE I HAD NO IDEA WHAT WAS GOING ON, BUT KAJIKI YUKI COULD HAVE MADE A COMEBACK WITH ANOTHER CHANKAN AGAINST SAKI... IF SHE WAS IN TENPAI WITH THE KOKUSHI MUSOU YUKI YOU ARE SO AWESOME

Additionally, skipping through the show, it seems like only one east was discarded (east and the 1p(obviously) were the two Yuki was missing) and none of the others had East in their hand, so her chances seem REALLY likely.

I feel like Momo now. :|

藤ちょこ

http://www.fuzichoco.com/

Why choco, when did you ever get your own domain name.

And facebook page.

Clearly I haven't been paying attention to her enough...! :V

EDIT: http://overload.co.nz/

Seriously fuzicoco you're going to NEW ZEALAND OF ALL PLACES???? ;o;  Why can I never meet her...? ;o;

random cat. do not worry about this.

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　 　 　l　　, , ,　　　　　　　　　　　●　　　　 l
　　　　` ､　　　　　　(_人__丿　　　　､､､ 　 /　
　　　　　　`ｰ ､__　　　　　　　　　　 　 　 ／
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　　　　　　　　 ,-､　　　　　　　　　　　　,.-､
　　　　　　　 ./:::::＼　　　　　　　　　 ／::::::ヽ
　　　　　　　/::::::::::::;ゝ--──-- ､._/::::::::::::::|
　　　　　　 /,.-‐''"´ 　　　　　　　　 ＼:::::::::::|
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EDIT:
　　　　　　　　 ,-､　　　　　　　　　　　　,.-､
　　　　　　　 ./:::::＼　　　　　　　　　 ／::::::ヽ
　　　　　　　/::::::::::::;ゝ--──-- ､._/::::::::::::::|
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　　　　` ､　u　　　　(_人__丿　　　　､､､ 　 /
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　　　　　　　　　/`'''ｰ‐‐──‐‐‐┬'''""´ 

Sing GUMI, Happy Birthday!

Looks like some good GUMI songs for her birthday came out after all.



It's tearfish's illustration! Bonus points for that! (Although her illustration looks more like miki than GUMI :V) That aside, I'm not too sure about the monotonic parts for most of the song, but I think chorus is pretty cool to listen to, as is the intermission. Instrumentals and illustration make this song pretty decent. I'm guessing the red haired girl is why the song is called "Cranberry"....



Somehow, I get the feeling the lyrics to this song would be really amusing to read. The video is pretty cute as usual, and the song has a nice "informative" feel to it. I guess its a pretty amusing song to listen to while watching the video, which is pretty fun. :V "Heartbreak Headlines"! Sounds like a good relationship song huh.



The first place song, and the song I've been listening to most of the day. A pretty normal song that's reminiscent of a few songs from supercell and KOTOKO (uh, just from my experience...). The more of the melodic ones that is, without excessive rock or excessive "poppy" style. Just a good "Rising" song if it makes song. I guess it tries to sound epic! As if, it were the World's Last Confession or something!!!!

First Mahjong Game

A long long time ago (ok maybe like about a year ago) I played tenhou for the first time. In my very first game, I got a yakuman. I didn't know really how to play or what I was doing. I never took a screenshot so I couldn't relive the moment ever again.

I think it looked something like this.

What's that? I got the yakuman again? No, that's not important. What is important is the fond mahjong memories of the past! Ah, past life... if only I had that same kind of luck I had before...

Oh wait.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GUMI

This year, I came prepared for the onslaught. Last year I was caught off guard and then it was like "WHOOSH HUGE AMOUNT OF PAGES OF GUMI PICS TO GO THROUGH". Well, this year, just as expected, there was still a huge amount of pictures, but I was prepared! Still have to go through 29 pages and counting, the pictures are still coming in since her birthday's not over yet...

I would include some vocaloid videos but I don't like any of the more recent ones that much... I already put the ones I liked in the previous post, so now I'll just take some pictures directly from pixiv. :V

Suddenly, lots of VOCALOID

...songs.



The current highest ranking song. A rather serious and dark song for IA, with a reasonably good melody. Usually these kinds of songs are too rock-type for my tastes, but sometimes they sound pretty good. GUMI's Moziak Role was about the same. Admittedly, not the best song I think for IA, but I think it's still pretty neat. Title is something like a "complete trap love rater"? :V HAHA THAT SAYS LOVE LETTER GOOD JOB. :V "Perfect Crime Love Letter"



It looks like Happy Synthesizer all over again, except Miku instead of Luka! The little charms in the song are pretty cute and catchy. The voices weren't done too well I think in this song, but the song is definitely cute, so its a fun song to listen to. The title is "Love Potion", I'm pretty sure I didn't get this wrong this time.



Classic melodic GUMI song! You're classic soft rock song with gentle melodies and love themes. Well, we have enough of these songs, but hey, its GUMI, and its GUMI's birthday tomorrow, so why not?!? Anyway I have no idea what the title is supposed to be so we use google again!!! "Hoshi Ai" I guess something like "want love"? :V



WARM AND FLUFFY!!! FLUFFY FLUFFY SONG!!! :V SOOOO PUFFY AND WAFFY!! V: ...PERFECT SONG FOR MAHJONG, don't you think? Well, it earned me a win with up to 50k points... but... this song is so FLUFFY!! makes you want to turn around in circles and dance in the snooooooow waaaaff fluffy fluffy.... V: Wait the title? "And then you got the moon", so it seems to say... wait I didn't need to use google translate for that... hmm, this is bad, I might know too much japanese now... actually I'm probably wrong so lets see what google translate says. "became the moon". Oh, really? You became the moon? that's nice. FLUFFY

PhD Reasoning and Review

http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7403-431a Yeah, I think this is a pretty good article.

こちら、幸福安心委員会です。

In a continuation of weird titles... well... :V

Man what the hell is this song! Something about happiness? Google translate says..."Peace of Mind is Happiness" Committee. WELL THEN.

人畜無害

My god the voice is so terrible in this but THE COSTUMES THE COSTUMES THE COSTUUUUMEEESSS

COOOOOSTUUUUMMME PLAAAAAYYYYY

The title seems to say something like Human something No Harm but I'm pretty sure I'm wrong so lets ask google translate again: Harmless man/beast. Well, okay. :V Maybe humans shouldn't harm beasts? Sounds like a vegetarian song!

Mar-Rie-d

http://kotaku.com/5919810/when-getting-married-means-goodbye-fan-club-and-no-more-sexy-pillows

Wait, isn't she the one that does Neptune's voice from Hyperdimension Neptunia?!?

CANNOT SEE NEPTUNE AS MARRIED, CANNOT--

Well, maybe her CPU form, I guess... :V

And time moves on slowly...Chii...

Scientists and Squirrels

http://scientopia.org/blogs/blather/2012/06/18/squirrel-war/

Sometimes, reading academic blogs is quite amusing.

RISING...

On the left, we have someone who didn't know which button to press to win the game.

On the top, we have a hand that's worth no points, so he can't win.

...I don't know what's going on on the right.

...WELL, a yakuman is a yakuman I guess!

Arata-Naru Sekai (Announcement)

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2012-06-07/denpa-onna-iruma-madhouse-plan-arata-naru-sekai-anime

hmmmm I like this concept quite a lot. Unfortunately, this doesn't look like it will work in the US very well since  its not likely all three will be translated all at once, especially for the light novel department... But maybe. It sounds cool!

初恋学園・純愛科

It's a manga-video! But man, why does GUMI have to be a guy? V: Stupid Rin... Also, it seems like twitter is no longer receiving my blog posts... I'm going to need to investigate, some time in the future. Wonder if something broke with the connector service thing. Anyway the title says something like first love school... something something afterwards. Innocent love or something. Well, I can worry about it later... maybe. V:

Miku Vita

http://www.jp.playstation.com/psvita/crystalwhite/miku/

>August 30th, 2012

>will only be in Japan August 9th to 14th


DAMMIT

I guess I'll just have to settle with Diva Extend.

如月アテンション

Lately, this "Jin" artist has been producing some decent songs. A few of his (her?) earlier songs I didn't like too much, but I really liked the fantasy forest song and this one isn't so bad either. I also really like the fact that he seems to use characters from his/her previous songs and includes them in his newer songs. I think that gives kind of a "fun" feel to it! The title of this song is uh... something moon attention. Well, it has to do with idols, right :V Google says 如月 is "Kisaragi"... thanks google, that helps a lot. :|

恋愛フィロソフィア

MIKU IS SO CUTE IN THIS VIDEO, EVEN THOUGH I'M WATCHING THIS IN LQ BECAUSE OF HIGH BW HOURS ... I need to watch this video again during low traffic hours so I can fully appreciate the moe... The song itself... well its nice. I wouldn't say its something too amazing but it fits the video pretty nicely, and the video is really nice. The title is something like "love"... firon fire? I have no idea what the middle part is. Lets as google! oh that's not a "n", its a "so", so philosophia? what? :V

Irony

Starting off I didn't think this song was that great, but I think here the song has a powerful sentimental effect, its sadness sort of touches people... well, at least for those who are feeling sad, anyway. Maybe. :V It's a nice a video, albeit pretty... sad. LOOK AT MY GREAT VARIATION IN VOCABULARY

Daydream

http://idle.slashdot.org/story/12/05/21/1721245/allowing-the-mind-to-wander-aids-creative-problem-solving?utm_source=feedburnerGoogle+Reader&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

I guess this is supposed to be a good thing, especially for me? I'm not sure that thinking about the next anime I should watch is spurring my creativity in work, though. :V

空想フォレスト

IA IS SO FREAKIN CUTE CAN'T HELP BUT LOVE~

I've noticed that my commentary for Vocaloid has been deteriorating more and more... um... I'll figure what to do about it eventually. Maybe.

Title, I think, has to do something with... "empty" forest? Forgotten forest? Let's ask google!! ..."Fantasy" well, I wouldn't have guessed that!

Mr. Wonderboy

MAN THIS MIKU IS SO CUTE

Unfortunately, nicovideo has times where it lowers the quality of the videos due to high traffic... I'm going to need to watch this again during the less traffic hours, although that's harder for me now since I'm actually close to Japan time now... :/

Subway Systems

http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/05/17/0134254/worlds-subways-share-common-mathematical-structure

01:39 <@GUMI-chan> the only exception to this is LA.
01:40 <@GUMI-chan> however
01:40 <@GUMI-chan> LA DOES have this sort of setup with its freeway system.
01:40 <@GUMI-chan> hmm
01:40 <@GUMI-chan> actually that's pretty interesting.

Concerts

Thought Process, about 2 hours ago.

"Hmm... So I heard about this Shoko Nakagawa concert yesterday, and I'm pretty interested in going... I'll need to see if I can find people to go with me. But in the meantime, let's check it's pricing... hmm... not bad, nothing over 100$, prices seem reasonable. I wonder what other concerts there are...

...wait...

...is that KOTOKO?...

...performing THIS FRIDAY??...

........................."


BLAH, we have a new schedule. You better come to this.

FONTS

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/05/scienceshot-large-fonts-elicit.html

RESEARCH IS SERIOUS BUSINESS

Mayu

http://mayusan.jp/

http://www.vocaloidism.com/2012/05/07/exit-tunes-announces-vocaloid-during-live-event/

ExitTunes is kind of big, I think, so this is pretty interesting.

"Yandere Middle School Student" and gothloli frillies? :V I am curious.

Ultimately, though, how the voice will turn out will determine how successful it will be. And maybe which producers will use her. But then again, ExitTunes! Might work. She looks so moe though!

セツナトリップ

I CAN GO TO HON-- wait wrong topic.

ANYWAY this song is pretty interesting. My mood is pretty good right now, so I might be more optimistic than usual. I think the voice in this song is done pretty well, although overall in the middle of the melody, I got kind of...hmm what's the best term, bored? Maybe not to that extent, though.

The title says something like "Setsuna Trip", where I'm not quite sure what setsuna means.

Oh right. "AH, MOU, GIIITAAA~~!!!"

Melancholic

Well, it's probably because I rarely ever listen to Rin songs but I TOTALLY DIDN'T KNOW THIS SONG EXISTED. I think I haven't really heard a lot of good rin songs so I usually skip over them, but this one has a very nice and catchy melody. Rin's voice is done pretty well here, although I think other vocaloids (like Miku) could probably sing to the same effect, but definitely not a bad song for Rin.

I guess I could say,

"全然知らない×知らないもん"!!!

ba-dum-psh. :V

外見と内面

Briefly checked the Vocaloid charts recently, haven't found anything that interesting. This one isn't too bad though.



Don't feel like thinking too much for the title, but it probably means something like "looking inside from the outside".

雪月花

A better song than Checkmate, I think, and should have gotten 1st instead. I like the vocals on this song A LOT better.

Title: Snow-moon-flower? :V

Also the picture is nicer. Actually no the pictures are about equally nice.

Checkmate

This is part posting the video, part seeing how to make this work on my blog. (formatting has changed, kind of confusing)

The vocals on this video aren't that great imo (I think they made GUMI's vocal go way too high), however for whatever reason, I think this song would be appropriate to play for mahjong. :V

I hate how they made this into pure HTML and not a combination of both, like the blog format was before.

Mahjong: Short Game

This was supposed to be a full 2-wind game for mahjong.

 I ended it in the first round, without even me losing my dealer's seat. 3 rounds as dealer.


12k hits each round. Ron, Ron, Tsumo.


 MAN WHY DID HE HAVE TO DIE?!?

 To see how short it is, Go here: http://tenhou.net/0/?log=2012042214gm-0009-9001-49700204&tw=0

BTW I'm probably going to lose all my luck from here on.

六兆年と一夜物語

Hou-shyie this will boot up IA to be one of the best vocaloids along with the originals, along with her other songs she's been singing. Our next generation GUMI has arrived!

Actually, I'm not sure if I like IA doing the fast parts on this song. Although I have to admit the instrumentals on this song is so cool I couldn't really care less. :V

The title (from not looking at any sources) apparently I think says "6 years and one night story"...maybe.

EDIT: Blah says it's 6 trillion years.

...Like an Epic Role Playing Game.

In my lab, preparing and meeting with our PI is like getting to the (reoccurring) final boss of the game.

You grind by doing research and gathering results.

You form your party members, ie your lab advisor, the associate professor that helps you a lot, and one or two graduate students that have work related to yours.

You try to find the best and rarest equipment - your presentation slides and what pictures you can put in them.

You finally make the encounter and you get floored - losing some valuable items in the process. Like your opportunity to go to Hong Kong.

...Well, the last part hasn't happened yet. HOPE I GRINDED ENOUGH.


Of course, the one thing this has and RPGs usually don't is a time limit in which you have to present yourself to the boss by (otherwise you could grind forever right?).

...HEY, IT'S LIKE A REALLY HARD ATELIER GAME. Atelier Cube, lets go! :V

China

I thought this slashdot comment was a really nice read.

In other news my sickness has rebounded and I once again will have to push back things I need to do so that once I get better I can feel the meaning of a second hell.

ネムラネーゼ

Good song.

Too sick, no energy to think up better commentary or even translate the title.

Airing

Series which I claimed I would watch as it aired, but eventually stopped after like 2 episodes:

World God Only Knows
Boku wa tomodachi ga sukunai


Series which I claimed I would watch as it aired, but I didn't even watch it:

Black Rock Shooter
Toradora

Series I am actually watching while airing:

Smile Precure.


...wait, why? :V GODDAMIT PIXIV. It's not even a good show, it makes me facepalm about 3 times per episode...

April Fooled

These pictures... I feel trolled from the cover image. :V

Chocolate

It is delicious chocolate.

Oh, so apparently this "link" thing was here for like 6 or so years and only now do they put up a notice on what it exactly does... CLICK THE TITLE :V

Atelier Ayesha

http://andriasang.com/con0e7/atelier_asha/

FIRST!!!


...which I'm probably not....

Come Back

Hey I didn't know they had these things to replay mahjong games!

http://tenhou.net/0/?log=2012032712gm-0009-9001-32b59fcb&tw=3

Long story short went from 900 points (south 2) to 1st place and then Shini steals my victory on the last round.

:V

High Risk Lolita

Lately it seems like the VOCALOID songs on nicovideo is focusing on interesting lyrics and videos, less so on the music (or at least, not the music to my tastes). At least this one, I think the chorus sounds pretty nice to me. I'm sure I'd enjoy the song a lot more if I could understand the lyrics though... :V

ろりこんでよかった～

This is how you make a rather terrible song very popular.

Mokyu Mokyu? :3 (*´ω｀*)

Fly

Sometimes, I just want to do this.

Neptuni mkII (Second Playthrough, unfinished)

Conquest Path...


...


Wooooooow. :V


...


It's longer than I thought it would be! Guess I gotta finish it tomorrow.

Doras

It makes worthless hands worth something.




Thanks Adam! :V

Atelier Atelier Atelier...

Atelier Meruru finally up for preorder! So when's the release date? Why, it's only May 22nd!


...wait a minute...


>May 22nd

>Leaves country for 3 months starting May 9th


NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO




In other news, a new atelier game is announced. Don't you find it grand, once we finally get a new atelier game onto US shores, Japan announces another? :|


...btw I'm going to preorder meruru anyway... even if I'll never play it until august... MAN THIS MAKES ME SO SO SAD

EDIT: new atelier ps3 game rumor source:

http://andriasang.com/con0bq/project_a14_detailed/

Probably will get more info later.

Snail Cyborgs

http://www.nature.com/news/cyborg-snails-power-up-1.10210

Who needs Pikachu when you have SNAIL GENERATORS

Penguins, Drums, and Apples

O SHI EXPLAINS EVERYTHING

well okay, not really, but this graph is pretty helpful in explaining the main plot of Penguindrum. Cool!

Hyperdimension Neptunia mkII (Unfinished)

I keep forgetting to write up this post, but now that I have to study my database notes, SUDDENLY I REMEMBERED. WOW, AMAZING.

>.> I need to find ways to stop giving into distractions...


Anyway, game play so far has been surprisingly good. Or rather, I believe that they somehow designed a really crappy gameplay game for the first Neptunia only to make the second one actually reasonably interesting, therefore giving the player a sense of "WOW THEY MADE THIS GAME SO MUCH BETTER IT MUST BE A MASTERPIECE NOW".

Honestly it probably isn't, a lot of things they've used has probably been done in other games before. However, given the rather crude gameplay in the first game, those who played the first which then moved onto the second would probably think the game is a revelation. At least the game appears to require more skill than "mash triangle until the battle is over" for about 95% of the battles.

I still haven't played far enough into the game to see if there is any trolling like they did with the first game. Of course, since I played the first game I suppose I can expect there to be something similar so it's not as much of a troll anymore (at least the shares thing is MUCH more obvious, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to deal with it later on in the game).

One of the good things in this game is that you get new members to your party sooner, and YOU DON'T NEED TO BUY DLC TO ADD THEM TO YOUR PARTY. These are the non-CPU characters (unfortunately), but nevertheless it's still good to see that we actually can have variety in our game, and not like the first game where you can accidentally BEAT THE ENTIRE GAME WITH THE SAME THREE CHARACTERS IN YOUR ENTIRE PARTY WITHOUT GAINING ANY MORE MEMBERS, ever since the start of the game, never once using the character switchoff option. (sigh, trolled)

Well of course, game play and everything else aside there are the characters. I mean seriously why else would we be buying both the first or the second version of the game? Glad to see Nepgear being much more moe than Neptune (I didn't like Neptune's human form that much, though her CPU form is pretty cool albeit with a 100% personality change). Nepgear is a great main character, just like Totori. It's one of those games where you can pick it up just because you like the main character so much so you know you'll enjoy the game despite what kind of gameplay it has. Kind of like Serah in FFXIII-2! :V

I just hope the game will be somewhat long. I'm guessing I'm already halfway through the game, maybe more (even though I only just finished "chapter 2"). But if the game turns out to have a lot more content and story ahead for me, I will be pleasantly surprised and amused.

-THEORY-

FUZICOCO MADE A F'KIN GUMI PICTURE

FDSJNIOFWENF OIV EFLSEFSOFIjf onoSEINFFF

WORDS CANNOT EXPRESS HOW EXCITED I AM

I guess I am forced to buy this album now. FOR GOOD REASON FUZICHOCO!!!!!!! GUUUUUMI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

春に一番近い街

A song with a really good accompaniment. Very very nice song, probably going to keep this song on my playlist for a while. The video is pretty cool too, simple, yet gets the point across nicely.

In other news, mkII is, so far, pleasantly satisfying. More details about it to come later.

Title has something to do with Spring and roads and... ok screw it, google translate! "Nearest town in spring"

MORE FFXIII-2?!?

So, in the game, you can unlock certain skills by collecting their trophy mechanism known as "fragments" (basically a bunch of side quests, with some fragments being part of the main story too... some even with the alternate endings they have, so MOST of the time its not a grind... except for these last two I need left, goddammit).

One of the fragment skills is called "Eyes of the Goddess." WHAT DOES THIS FANCY SKILL DO?


...It lets you move the camera around when you're in a cutscene.


...


CLEARLY IS THE BEST SKILL EVER. GOES TOTALLY WELL WITH THE BIKINI OUTFIT DLC I BOUGHT FOR SERAH.

By the way its somewhat amusing seeing Serah run around in a skimpy outfit while no one seems to care or take notice... Only in games, will you be able to see girl in a swimsuit running around fighting in a snowy environment... not only that, but provoking (well, I guess in that outfit she would be provoking) and defending against huge monsters with... a moogle and barely any clothes on.


JAPANESE LOGIC, AMIRITE? BIKINI ARMOR GO. SwimsuitGuard kind of happened accidentally due to me figuring out the best strategy to beat this one monster. One of my buffing pets WOULDN'T BUFF SERAH ANY ATTACK UP SKILLS SERIOUSLY WTF WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE STUPID PURPLE CHOCOBO, therefore, gave sentinel position to Serah.

Do not try this at home, kids.

Talking

http://news.yahoo.com/silence-japanese-researchers-build-speech-jamming-gun-195403773.html


Last paragraph and line makes it obvious this article was written by an American. An American Journalist at that.

EDIT: http://xkcd.com/481/ RELEVANT.

Final Fantasy XIII (1 playthough)

...BAD END........



Well, according to other people, its the temporary solution as they release more DLC with more scenarios. I guess some people aren't happy about it. I admit I was a little surprised and disappointed how short the main storyline was, although thinking again I think its perfect; I should be getting mkII by the end of this week so having finished off FFXIII (as short as it is) I can freshly start mkII, while doing the Final Fantasy miniquests in the meantime.

Yes, until then, I will play dress up with Serah. UPDATE DOWNLOAD FASTER SO I CAN MAKE SERAH WEAR SPIFFY COSTUMES

EDIT: DAMMIT there's no Serah costume outfit yet. :|

Flying Squid

http://www.nature.com/news/squid-can-fly-to-save-energy-1.10060


FLY, IKA MUSUME-CHAN, FLY!!!!!

FFXIII-2 (Unfinished)

Nexton is a freakin beast, and I didn't even optimize it with all mana drops/crystals whatever either...

And its just a tiny bug thing!


...just as planned...

In the meantime, still trying to get Serah as buffed up as possible. :V

Interviews

http://theinterviews.jp/treusbucks

Somehow I got interview questions even though I never told anyone about this site. What? I guess they're bots at asking interview questions? :|

Physics

http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/02/24/165212/physics-is-np-hard

Man, I guess we're not going to use computers to generate equations which govern the whole world any time soon... :|

Human Brain Project

http://www.nature.com/news/computer-modelling-brain-in-a-box-1.10066


Oh Markham. :V I want 1 billion pounds too!

ゆめのかたち

OH MY GOD

THIS SONG IS GREAT

I'M... I'M... CRYING ;o;

(note, currently not in an emotionally stable state due to various pressures provided in academia, your results my vary)

"The Form of a Dream".

水色と宇宙船

HOLY CRAP THE CUTENESS

天ノ弱 MMD

Almost makes me want to learn how to MMD!!!!

Anyway MMD cup so a bunch of MMD videos are popping up. This song is really cool, why do I not have this on my phone yet? :V

イカサマライフゲイム

8-bit openings are pretty cool.

VOCALROCK isn't exactly my favorite genre but I think the melody for this song is done pretty well. GUMI sounds quite all right in this song too. Staccato notes, yay!

This name... seems pretty hard for me to interpret. Let's try with rikai-kun:

"Ikasama Life Game", or trickery life game? Hmm. Seems like it can work.

FFXIII-2 (Still Starting)

So there's this option to replay stages and give different answers (to watch different interactions/cinematics), and one of those times is when Noel asks Serah who Snow is.

Of course, there are the logical answers like "Leader of our group", "my boyfriend", etc...

The second playthrough of that, a new one popped up.

Noel: So... who is this Snow person?
Serah: Oh? He's my cat!
Noel:...the leader your militia group is a cat?

...:V Oh Serah. (And yes apparently she has a cat which she named after Snow)

=====

My typical Serah.

In the cinematics:

"Oh I'm so weak and I need Noel and Snow to protect me and help me I'm so fragile! *faint* "

In actual battle:

"FIRAGA" *Things blow up, enemies get OHKO'd, the whole screen is full of explosives*


After battle:

"...I feel kind of sorry for them. :("



If only I could insert "maniac yandere laughter" while she is attacking.

Notebook

I liked how the song started off but I kind of got disappointed as it went further in. In particular, I actually wasn't really happy how GUMI's voice turned out when she started her vocals... the guitar is kind of intruding too. The piano was really great, why did they have to tune it out with other stuff like the guitar?? ;o;

Crowdsourcing

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/117325-mit-crowdsources-and-gamifies-brain-analysis

Interesting. Not directly related to my research but I feel like they have things I may want to investigate later. I was always interested in Seung's work.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 (starting)

So, I had a lot of things scheduled to do since this month coming up is going to be a busy one with midterms, projects, and my phd to think about.


uh, I totally forgot everything I was going to do.


...

OMG SERAH IS SO MOE

透明人間のニヒリズム

FINALLY! ANOTHER SOFT SONG OF THIS TYPE, IT MAKES ME SO HAPPY TO HEAR A NEW SONG OF THIS KIND BACK ON THE CHARTS!

I think I've noticed (or maybe I've noticed before but just never mentioned), I like songs where Miku sings a bit softly and the song is more mellow and slow (but not too slow), it just has a nice, tranquil feel to it. Also, the xylophones (...is the best way I can describe the instrument played in this song) adds a nice peaceful yet unique touch to the song. SATISFIED :V

Although, the title is kind of annoyingly hard to translate from my head... something about rhythms in the end, that's about it. What would Google say?

"Nihilism of the Invisible Man"

...

Okay, not only would I never have guessed that, I did it completely wrong with my rhythm guess.

334人の敵

lately it seems like Miku sounds like GUMI, and GUMI sounds like Miku... well I guess not completely in this song.

Kind of surprised, was expecting when coming in that I wouldn't like the song. But I guess you can't judge a song by its PV as they say... Well I guess they don't. V:

Would YOU want 334 guys as your enemies? :V

Tell Your World (Again)

GUYS THE COMMENTS ARE GREAT

First time I'd praise a video because of comment effects.

Miku Punch?!?

http://andriasang.com/comzp6/hatsune_miku_punching_bag/

W-Wh-Why? ;o;

Bad End Night

Nicely done video, pretty interesting song (not entirely to my tastes, but nice to listen to), only thing that would have been better is if I understood the lyrics. I bet the story would be nice to listen to that way.

Well, no matter. GUMI-maid! :V

Mawaru Penguin Drum

Here is a show that both arises and crashes beautifully all the way till the end. Since I would like to discuss how amazing the crash of the end (and the series in general) is, its probably safe to say there will be quite a lot of spoilers... well... since I'm kind of talking about the ending itself for a good chunk of the time. Let me also say that this series was great in because of the way it was constructed, despite the FABULOUS wreck of an ending it made.

First lets make a proper analogy. Imagine a plotline of an anime (or novel, or a movie, etc...) As a thread, or a series of threads. If its a series of threads, it would refer to the anime having multiple plotlines. In many cases anime would have either a single thread, of a couple threads lined up alongside each other (in parallel, several stories going on at once) or one after another (in series, more commonly scene). Usually (unless the series is bad) the threads are distinct, there is a beginning and an end, and all is cool.

Mawaru Penguin Drum, as anyone could guess, is a parallel series. But it does more than just be a parallel series... because in many lines, there doesn't seem to be a proper ending (or beginning in some cases). In those cases the threads seem to go on into nowhere heading into different directions, and you really don't know what you're looking at except for a horribly knotted middle part which turns out to be the plotline for the anime itself. This can be the best analogy in my mind about Mawaru Penguin Drum. I can't exactly say this is a great thing, but since the knotted part was so interesting I can't say its a bad thing either.

Now, to take a look at some of the threads.
By far, Yuri and Takako (was that his name? :V) had the most developed stories, therefore they actually had a beginning and an ending. This is ironic because they are the most minor of the main characters. But they are (I think) the only characters where we know where they come from, we know what their conflict is, and we know how it was resolved. Actually, Matsume (?? the rich girl) was fairly complete too, although the truth and her real past got muddled together at the end.

Himari is great. Himari is wonderful. Himari is the main reason to watch this show. However, she is also a character of mystery. Her beginning, at least, isn't quite clear along with a good amount of her past. (Or maybe I just really wanted to see more Double (Triple?) H. WHERE IS MY MOE) However her issue is much less conspicuous than the others, and for the most part, acceptable. It's acceptable that she was orphaned, brought to an orphanage (I swear this is the child broiler and I can't really think of any possible case for it to not be) and then rescued by Sho. And in the end she lived a fairly happy life (Somehow got her parents back... we'll talk about fate transfer later). So what the heck is up with the transformation scene?

The transformation scene is a good chance to transition into Sho and Kan, but first it in itself needs some discussion. First off, I believe the Himari with the hat is still Himari (rather than Momoka). Instead, it just brings out her inner persona, along with some tucked away knowledge that she somehow has. And this means Himari is actually a pretty sadistic person in nature. I say this because of the way she treats foods while preparing them (cabbages and potatoes or something), she seems to be amused at treating them in a rather cruel manner. It could also just be my bias because I think if she was hiding a sadistic personality under her innocence it would be much cuter.
Now, the Penguin Drum. WTF IS THE PENGUIN DRUM. One solution is that its the spell that Momoka/Ringo needs to transfer rate. This is a perfectly logical solution. It could be that, just like Momoka, the spell actually got split in half too and was placed into both Kan and Sho. Bringing them together allows the spell to be cast. This would make sense to see why Momoka told Sho to rush to the train, even though the diary was burned up. But, the spell wasn't cast by Sho and Kan, it was cast by Ringo... who happened to have the lyrics to the song sung by Double H... who got the spell from Himari..........

What the f_ck?

Ahem. Kan and Sho did in the end recite the fate transfer spell. In fact now that I think about it, Kan probably did that so that it was possible for Sho to be born (the two caged scene I think is before they were born, the apple being giving them the opportunity to live, the sharing of the apple showing that they both had only "half-life" to live with, and the spell actually letting them do that). The half-apple might also support the divided spirit of Momoka (or the diary) lies within them rather than the hat(s). I think this is the case because of the lack of Mario's presence. (WTF, WHAT HAPPENED TO MARIO) So then, what exactly are Kan and Sho? Likely from what I just said, they just happened to be born at the same time, but one of them (or both of them, at first) weren't allowed to live. And then some fancy spellcasting happened and voila, they exist. The ending I suppose just emphasized that they weren't really allowed to exist in the first place, and they transfer their existence mostly to Ringo and Himari in order for the fate transfer to work properly.

Fate Transfer I imagine is a lot like in Stein's Gate where people actually hop over to different dimensions. This can be most clearly seen in Yuri's arc, where after the fate transfer, somehow her father disappeared. There are a few discrepencies though, like why Momoka still knew her and what about Takako... but I think this could just be explained as Momoka being some overseeing allmighty being (out of the box amirite) and Takako possibly meeting her after the fate transfer. (BTW Loli Yuri is great.)

Ringo is the reincarnation of Momoka, without any memories. A good enough excuse. That's also probably why she can cast the spell. However, unlike Momoka, she was not "out of the box".

Satoshi or whatever that guy's name is probably just too illogical to make any sense out of. Somehow he and Momoka are opposing entities; whether they were actually human in the first place is debatable. The whole fact is that the two entities are so illogical that we can't even make a good conclusion on their story, if they were even human, or why they were even there.

And, as I stated before, Mario is the most baffling character. He shows up with a hat and then DOESN'T DO ANYTHING?!? WHY?!? WHY IS HERE THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE THEN?!? JUST TO GIVE THE GIRL ESMERELDA?!? :V

UN-GO (Unfinished, ep 2)

Well, the vocaloid reference is everywhere and I thank people for spoiling that (not really). However, the SOPA / Protect IP Act (or maybe it was talking about a similar issue in Japan?) was a surprise. Props to them for pulling off a worse-case scenario of a bill like that.

Also, where is the gothloli that is being posted all over pixiv? >:O

Birds and Fish

This is a great version of 千本桜.

Sudoku

http://www.nature.com/news/mathematician-claims-breakthrough-in-sudoku-puzzle-1.9751

What is research?!? Research is SUDOKU!!!

Well, I suppose its okay to give them pardon since its a mathematics problem.

44 versions of 千本桜

Just for my reference.

Tumors and Surgery

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressreleases/radical_surgery_saves_life_of_young_mom_california_first/

It's a good story but... did they say "basketball-sized tumor"? Of the LIVER? Wouldn't that be bigger than the liver itself? ...How does that work?!?

Pigeon Math

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/12/no-joke-pigeons-ace-a-simple-math.html

Wait, did I post something similar before? Anyway, Pigeons are smart.

Baby Maniacs

Lately there doesn't seem to be any real good songs on the charts besides "Tell Your World" (apparently what's #1 is some "Eazy Dance" song which, while I admit Miku's vocals are pretty cool in that song, isn't exactly a style which I favor) but I did come across this one.

The thing about this song is its almost like a carbon copy of "Sweet Devil", from the weird looking robo-Mikus to the basic song structure layout, to how they synthesized Miku's voice (synthesizing a synthetic voice? :V). I'm pretty sure the person behind the video is the same, and I guess the song artist is probably the same too. Still, a fun watch in spite of all the similarities.

Idolm@ster

The anime with a big following rivaling touhou and vocaloid and had ridiculously high production value. Well, that's not the reason I'm making the post, its more like a re-evaluation of the characters that I had in mind from what I've known of Idolm@ster before watching the anime and from when I watched Xenoglossia. (Which was a horrible rendition of Idolm@ster, I admit)

I'll start with the characters that I had little knowledge of, because they weren't in Xenoglossia and were classified as rival characters in some of the last couple games. Heck, I didn't even know who Hibiki was (when the anime first started I was trying to guess that she was Chihaya, which was obviously wrong even when I was thinking about it back then)

Hibiki- Fairly generic, usual run of the mill fang type character. A good amount of spunk and overall a nice average character. I'm not moe-ing over her character, but I don't really see anything about her either. How she looks is how she acts, too.

Takane- Well... she's weird. I guess this can be stated as pretty obvious, but at first her character design looks really nice and could potentially be seen as a (new?) favorite of mine, but I can't really get around her personality. There's nothing wrong with it (as is the case with almost all characters in Idolm@ster) but it just doesn't work, especially the way she speaks... well... I guess some people will go after it, I suppose... :V

Miki- I had a little more experience with this character as this was the character my friend chose when I watched him play a little bit of Idolm@ster. Her character in the game seemed quite a bit different from how the anime portrayed her, which showed her being more selfish and not quite the friendly ideal idol I would have initially made her out to be. To me there's nothing wrong with that, but the selfishness could get a little bit "eh..." sometimes. But hey, everyone (well, lots of people) like Miki anyway so why not. Probably not one in my ideal idol group though.
Oh right. DUCK-SENSEI!!!!!!

Makoto- Uh... it makes me wonder, are there really idols that act like cross-genders and appeal to the opposite gender...? Well, at least I'd be really surprised if there's a trap idol like that DS game... >.> Makoto is still cool, but in a manly way. (Yes, Makoto would be sad...)

Azusa- HER HAIR... WHY... HER HAIR... ;o; *ahem* Uh, basically an Alicia (from ARIA) clone. She's pretty cute and funny, I dare say I have a better opinion of her now than when coming into the show. In fact, I believe the episode themed around her is arguably the best episode in the entire series... it was the episode that made me say "Man, this show is GREAT." She's really popular too, seeing a lot of doujinsh-- eer, fanart of her around... >.>
ALSO her dancing is the best out of Ryuuguu Komachi...okay well crap. I'm liking her more than I expected aren't I.

Ritsu- Good job letting her be the producer, considering she was my least favorite character, appearance wise, out of the idols. The producer role suits her quite nicely. It's about the same image I have of Makoto: a cool person, but I dunno about her being an idol. Her episode though made some points out where she can be cute. Still, I think she works well as a producer, and should stay that way.

Mami/Ami: Coming in, they were my favorite idol(s). But while watching the show, to me, something just didn't click with them... they were great at times and definitely had some funny moments which I enjoyed, but... I think it was their style or something that put me off? I'm not entirely sure. I would still rank them higher than most other characters, and I still think they're pretty cute at times, but I guess their image started to come off more as "cool" or just "silly" at some points that made me lose moe interest in them over time.

Yayoi: On the other hand, they somehow managed to make the one character that has the worst fashion sense one of the most moe characters in the show. My opinion of Yayoi has skyrocketed in this show and now I regard her as one of the most moe characters in Idolm@ster. Her sense of style is HORRENDOUS, though, although this is not surprising given the background story they have of her. But when she is in that idol costume, and her voice that somehow squeaks with moe, man, she is just so cute.

Yukiho: She was my favorite character in Xenoglossia... up until a certain point, which at that point Xenoglossia really just flew down the drain in a lot of areas. I don't know if this is an aftereffect, but just like the twins I didn't see quite as much appeal in her anymore as I did before. But still, she's pretty nice, and I would say has more moe points than the twins.

Iori: Classic Tsundere. Even voiced by KugiRie. (Wow, KugiRie did Idolm@ster? Didn't know that until I watched the anime) Not much opinion on her. :V

Chihiya: First off, the Xenoglossia anime completely ruined her image for me (and probably other people) so unfortunately I can't get a good opinion of her. In spite of that, her story was pretty damn amazing in terms of empathy (and makes Idolm@ster a little more than just a happy-go-lucky show) and I give her props to that. However, her personality is pretty hard to like in my opinion, probably because she just seems so unsociable (which is a lot like me huh...).

Haruka: The main! The main is always the main! She was pretty cute in Xenoglossia (in spite of the way the show destroyed itself near the end) and she stays pretty cute in the anime. The conflicts she has at the end was pretty nice too, I daresay it was pretty nice to watch.

Overall the anime had a good feeling to it. It had the idealistic nature of Aria, for the most part, with more kira-kiraing from the idol part. There was still some random plots to spice the series up a little, but I guess it wasn't overdone so it wasn't too bad (I wouldn't have minded either way if they were taken out or not though).

SO THE PERFECT IDOL GROUP? I guess it would be some combination of Yayoi, Azusa, Haruka, Yukiho, and Ami/Mami...

I also think a couple of the DS idols looked cute but they weren't really emphasized in the anime D:

Tell Your World

ITS A NEW YEAR GUYS, HERE'S A NEW YEAR'S POST



HAPPY MIKU YEAR